charge back--cost

[Nickster]

Hi,

When I bid a project, I provide a fixed hourly cost. However, I may need to
subcontract some functions to different experts at different hourly rates. I
need Project Professional to maintain my cost to these experts as well as the
project cost for my client based on the fixed hourly rate. How do I set it
up project server to provide both costs?

Thank you,

Nick

 

[Marc Soester [MVP]]

Hi Nick,

there are several ways for this depending if you manage global resources in
project server or not. If you not using global resources, it is fairly easy.
All you need to do is create local resources and assign a standard rate to
the resources. you then assign the resources to tasks and the cost will be
calculated. If you have a fixed price cost, you can use a 0 rate for the
resources with the fixed price and just simply enter the fixed price in the
"Fixed price" column within your Gantt Chart view for example.

If you deal with global resources, you will need to make sure that you have
a 0 cost rate table for the fixed priced resources which you can assing to
the tasks within your schedule and use local resources for your non global
resource requiremtns ( e.g. subcontractor)

This will allow you to manage the fixed cost component and the extra
resource rate.
Hope this makes sense

 

[Vaso Vukovic]

Marc is quite right. If you are using enterprise resources from the Project
Server pool, you may also want to look in to setting up some 'generic'
resources for different subcontractor types (e.g. "Junior Java developer" @
$100 p/h, "Data Cabler" @ $85 p/h ) then re-use those on various projects.
Works a charm if the subcontractor rates are set or even across multiple
projects plus gives some anonymity to the printed reports (in cases where
that matters).

 

[Nickster]

Thank you for the update. However, it sounds like I can not measure my cost
seprate from the project cost? In other words, If I bill the client fixed
$180/hr and in some cases I pay the contractor $190/hr and in others I pay
$40/hr Project Server will not be able to tell me where I lost money vs
gained let alone my over all return. Do I have the right understanding?

Thanks,

Nick

 

[Rod Gill]

I have Rate A for each Resource as the cost charged to the client and Rate B
setup to be the internal cost (or contractor cost to me). It then setup
Cost1 field as Internal cost. I calculate by:
1) View Resource Usage
2) Insert Cost Rate Table field
3) Copy B to all rows
4) View Gantt Chart
5) Apply Cost table and insert Cost1 field (rename to Internal Cost)
6) Copy Cost column to Cost1
7) Use 1-3 to reset Cost Rate Table to A
8) Insert Cost2 column and rename to Margin
9) Create formula to calculate [Cost]-[Cost1]

I create a macro to do this with one click of a button, but it does clearly
show the margin each task has.

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see:
http://www.projectvbabook.com